Beauty as Protest 1845–1905

William Morris, News from Nowhere  2015

Morris & Co. (London, UK), Pipernel design, wallpaper book  1917–1939

Anne Gaskell, Gaskell Wall Clock  1848

Arthur Hughes, April Love  1855–6

Hughes’s painting shows a moment of tension between a young couple. The woman turns away from the barely visible male figure, bent over her left hand. Like many Victorian artists, Hughes used the language of flowers in his work. The overgrown ivy that also decorates the frame signifies loyalty and eternal life, and roses, love. The petals strewn on the floor may reflect that the love affair has been strained, but the ivy suggests a positive outcome. It is thought that Tryphena Ford modelled for the painting. Hughes married Ford, ‘his early and only love’, in 1855, the year he made this painting.

Gallery label, November 2019

Thomas Woolner, Puck  1845–7

Puck is a mischievous invisible fairy in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Thomas Woolner has illustrated a scene here from an ‘Imaginary Biography’ of Puck. He alights on a mushroom to save a sleeping frog from a hungry snake. The sculpture captures the instant before a sudden movement – as Puck touches the frog with his foot it will jump away just before the snake attacks.Ideal or poetic subjects drawn from literature, mythology or history, were highly regarded by sculptors in the mid-nineteenth century.

Gallery label, July 2007

John William Inchbold, The Moorland (Dewar-stone, Dartmoor)  1854

Inchbold, who was born in Leeds, came under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites in the early 1850s. He established himself as one of the leading landscapists of the movement but by the end of the decade had adopted a broader, more atmospheric approach. Inchbold exhibited a watercolour of the Dewar Stone in 1850, with the subtitle 'the favourite haunt of the poet Carrington', a reference to the Devonshire poet Noel Thomas Carrington. In 1855, making a grander poetical allusion, he exhibited an oil painting titled 'The Moorland - Tennyson'. It is not known whether this was the present picture.

Gallery label, September 2004

Edward Lear, View of Reggio and the Straits of Messina  1852

John William Inchbold, Gordale Scar, Yorkshire  exhibited 1876

Inchbold, who was born in Leeds, came under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites in the early 1850s. He established himself as one of the leading landscapists of the movement but by the end of the decade had adopted a broader, more atmospheric approach, as shown here. When it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy it was accompanied by lines from Wordsworth’s sonnet ‘Gordale’ of 1818: ‘... when the air/Glimmers with fading light .../Then, pensive Votary!, let thy feet repair/To Gordale-chasm, terrific as the lair/where the young lions couch; ...’.

Gallery label, November 2016

Henry Wallis, The Room in Which Shakespeare Was Born  1853

Wallis launched his career exhibiting a sequence of paintings of interior scenes connected with the life of playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616). This one shows Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon. It is based on a biography by Charles Knight written in 1842. It describes ‘the mean room, with its massive joists and plastered walls, firm with ribs of oak’. Wallis has painted the room in detail, including every nail securing the floorboards. He has also taken note of Knight’s passage describing how ‘hundreds amongst the hundreds of thousands by whom that name is honoured have inscribed their names on the walls of the room.’

Gallery label, June 2019

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, The Châtelaine  exhibited 1904

The Châtelaine (a French word for a noble woman who is mistress of a castle) is a polychrome, gilded statuette encrusted with semi-precious stones, set on a wooden base with turrets at its four corners and decorated with small Italianate landscapes on all four of its sides. Made of finely modelled plaster, the sculpture is richly patterned, painted and patinated. It represents a noble woman wearing a medieval ‘Balzo’ headdress and an opulent black and gold damask dress lined with red. Her estate is signified by a prominent set of heavy keys hanging from the green purse on her right side. Her face expresses sorrow and her hands are clasped in prayer or anguish. Despite the French title of the work, the figure’s style of dress appears to be Florentine, which is in accord with the Tuscany landscapes that are painted with gold leaf on the wooden base of the sculpture, in the manner of the so-called ‘predella’ scenes situated below sixteenth-century altarpieces. One of them represents a walled city, another a property with cypress trees; a third depicts a more generic landscape and the last one a shore approached by several ships.

Ford Madox Brown, The Hayfield  1855–6

Brown painted this landscape directly from nature. The setting is the Tenterden estate at Hendon, north London, looking east at twilight. He finished the final details in his studio, adding a self-portrait in the lower left corner. The effect he sought to capture was the way in which the brown hay was made to appear almost pink by contrast with the dense green grass. After it was finished his dealer rejected it on the grounds that he had never seen hay of this colour. Brown later retouched the painting before selling it to his friend and fellow artist William Morris.

Gallery label, November 2016

Ford Madox Brown, Carrying Corn  1854–5

This intensely coloured painting captures a harvest field just before sunset. Each landscape element is faithfully recorded in jewel-like colours. This is a nostalgic view of rural England, untouched by industrialisation and modern city life. Ford Madox Brown’s view is typical of idealists of the time who believed that an engagement with nature offered spiritual redemption from urban corruption. Brown and his family were facing financial hardship at the time this picture was painted. It was one of a number of ‘potboilers’, modest and straightforward landscapes he hoped would sell easily.

Gallery label, July 2007

Thomas Seddon, Jerusalem and the Valley of Jehoshaphat from the Hill of Evil Counsel  1854–5

Seddon and his friend Holman Hunt journeyed to the Holy Land in 1854, to bring greater authenticity, spiritual and topographical, to their religious works. This view, painted south of Jerusalem, shows the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane, the site of Christ’s anguish before the Crucifixion. The valley of Jehoshaphat was also believed to be where the Last Judgement would take place. Unlike John Martin’s apocalyptic visions, displayed nearby, Seddon represents the site in painstaking, sun-lit detail, paralleling the art critic John Ruskin’s remarks that ‘in following the steps of nature’, artists were ‘tracing the finger of God.’

Gallery label, March 2010

Henry Alexander Bowler, The Doubt: ‘Can these Dry Bones Live?’  exhibited 1855

This young woman, leaning on the gravestone of a man called John Faithful, is contemplating religious doubt. In particular, the Christian belief that the dead will be resurrected on the Day of Judgement. Long-standing religious beliefs were being disrupted at the time this was painted. New scientific publications explored theories of evolution, challenging literal readings of the Bible. Her question appears to be answered by the growing chestnut tree and the stone at its base, carved with the word Resurgam’, which translates as ‘I shall rise again’. The blue butterfly on the skull symbolizes the human spirit.

Gallery label, August 2018

William Morris, La Belle Iseult  1858

The inspiration for this painting was Thomas Malory's 'Morte d'Arthur' (1485), in which Guinevere's adulterous love for Sir Lancelot is one of the central themes. The model is Jane Burden who became Morris's wife in 1859, and also appears in Rossetti's 'Proserpine' displayed nearby. She was 'discovered' by Morris and Rossetti when they were working together on the Oxford Union murals, the subject matter for which was also taken from Malory. The painting is essentially a portrait of her in medieval dress. It is a splendid expresion of the intense medieval style prevailing in Rossetti's circle in the late 1850s, with its emphasis on pattern and historical detail. This is Morris's only completed oil painting.

Gallery label, September 2004

John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the Past  exhibited 1859

This modern-life picture shows a prostitute in her lodgings overlooking the Thames. Her situation is indicated by the shabby interior with jewellery and money strewn across her dressing table, and the man’s glove and walking stick on the floor. Waterloo Bridge and Hungerford Bridge are shown in the distance straddling the busy polluted river. A sickly-looking plant by the woman’s side suggests her impending doom.

Gallery label, November 2016

William Holman Hunt, Our English Coasts, 1852 (‘Strayed Sheep’)  1852

The location shown in this painting is the Lovers’ Seat, an idyllic spot at Fairlight Glen near Hastings in Sussex. Hunt laboured here from mid-August to December 1852, enduring rain, wind and bitter cold to master his view. Despite the changes in weather, the painting seems a credible replication of particular illuminated moment. The colours used to convey light are daringly juxtaposed in order to intensify the clarity of every surface, a method that astounded audiences on both sides of the Channel.

Gallery label, November 2016

Joanna Mary Wells, Portrait of Sidney Wells  1859

Joanna Mary Wells painted this portrait of her second child, Sidney, while he was still less than a year old. Such a young baby must have been impossible to keep still, which probably explains the difficulty she experienced in seizing a likeness.This has been interpreted as a highly personal work, possibly because of its small icon-like format. It also became a very poignant image after the early deaths of both Sidney and Joanna Mary Wells.

Gallery label, July 2007

John Frederick Lewis, Study for ‘The Courtyard of the Coptic Patriarch’s House in Cairo’  c.1864

The Coptic Church is the ancient Orthodox Christian Church of Egypt. This study of the patriarch’s house was executed after Lewis’s return from Egypt in 1851, from the sketches he brought back. The picture highlights Lewis’s skill in depicting figures and setting with careful attention to light and shade, produced here by the top-lit courtyard. Lewis caused a sensation when he exhibited one of his Near Eastern scenes in London in 1850. John Ruskin admired his attention to detail, claiming that in truth-to-nature he ranked alongside the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Gallery label, November 2016

Ford Madox Brown, Chaucer at the Court of Edward III  1856–68

This picture is a replica of Ford Madox Brown’s largest and most ambitious painting, exhibited in 1851. It was significant for its portrayal of natural sunlight and was his first attempt ‘to carry out the notion ... of treating the light and shade absolutely, as it exists at any one moment, instead of approximately or in generalized style’. This pursuit of ‘truth to nature’ was consistent with Pre-Raphaelite ideals, as was his careful workmanship. The picture’s subject, Geoffrey Chaucer, reflects the growing popularity with artists of English literature instead of more conventional classical myths and biblical tales.

Gallery label, November 2016

Sir John Everett Millais, Bt, Ophelia  1851–2

This work shows the death of Ophelia, a scene from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Traumatised when Hamlet breaks off their betrothal and accidentally kills her father, she allows herself to fall into a stream and drown. The flowers she has been collecting symbolise her story, the poppies representing death. Millais painted the lonely setting leaf-by-leaf over many months by the Hogsmill River, Surrey. Afterwards, the artist, poet and model Elizabeth Siddall posed in a wedding dress in a bath of water at Millais's studio. Through the painting, Millais critiqued the Victorian practice of occasionally arranging marriages for money and status.

Gallery label, March 2022

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Beloved (‘The Bride’)  1865–6

This work is inspired by the biblical Song of Solomon. It tells the story of a young woman preparing to marry. Rossetti shows her lifting a veil from her face, her eyes fixed directly on the viewer. The bride is surrounded by her attendants. In the foreground is a young Black child, holding roses. The women around the bride appear to have darker skin and hair than she does. Some modern commentators suggest that Rossetti is celebrating beauty and diversity. Others see it as racist, and argue that it imposes white standards of beauty, positioning the bride as superior due to the colour of her skin.

Gallery label, June 2019

Joanna Mary Wells, Gretchen  1861

This picture alludes to a central scene in Faust, the tragic play published by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the early 19th century. In the play, Gretchen, confused, seduced and pregnant by Faust, seeks solace in church. The sitter for the work was probably Wells’s nursery maid. Women artists had limited access to models at the time. Joanna Wells (née Boyce) had established a reputation during the 1850s as a painter of portraits, genre and landscape. She also wrote art reviews for the Saturday Review. Her career ended prematurely at the age of thirty. Wells herself was pregnant when she began this painting. She died shortly after the birth and the picture was left unfinished.

Gallery label, December 2020

Ford Madox Brown, ‘Take your Son, Sir’  ?1851–92

This enigmatic picture shows the artist’s second wife, Emma, and their new-born son, Arthur Gabriel. The pose is reminiscent of a traditional Madonna and child but the mother’s strained expression suggests that this is not a conventional celebration of marriage and motherhood. The domestic details of the room are indicative of a contemporary-life subject in which the woman holds out the baby to her husband reflected in the mirror. Ford Madox Brown began the composition in 1851 and, although he worked on it over a number of years, abandoned it following the death of Arthur in 1857.

Gallery label, November 2016

Frederic George Stephens, Mother and Child  c.1854

Stephens painted this in the first year of the Crimean War (1853-6) and the major world event plays out in the setting of a Victorian nursery. The child pauses playing to reach towards his mother as she reacts to a letter which brings bad news from the conflict. Stephens encloses the figures in a curved frame like a traditional Madonna and Child and employs everyday objects, such as the military toys, as symbols. Stephen’s extremely detailed Pre-Raphaelite style was time-consuming and the picture was never finished.

Gallery label, August 2018

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt, Frieze of Eight Women Gathering Apples  1876

The theme of this panel would appear to be connected with the legend of the Garden of the Hesperides, a subject Burne-Jones treated on several other occasions. It may have been intended as an overmantel for a fireplace or as a decorative panel for a cassone or chest. The gold relief reflects the artist’s interest in early Renaissance art where such decoration was used extensively. The frieze may have been commissioned by the artist’s patron, the MP and collector William Graham, whose daughter Lady Horner owned a similar panel.

Gallery label, November 2016

Ford Madox Brown, Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet  1852–6

This picture illustrates the biblical story of Christ washing his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper. It has an unusually low viewpoint and compressed space. Critics objected to the picture’s coarseness – it originally depicted Jesus only semi-clad. This caused an outcry when it was first exhibited and it remained unsold for several years until Ford Madox Brown reworked the figure in robes. Brown was never invited to join the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood but he was a close associate of the group. Several members modelled for the disciples in this picture and the critic FG Stephens sat for Christ.

Gallery label, November 2016

Henry Wallis, Chatterton  1856

This highly romanticised picture created a sensation when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856. Thomas Chatterton was a poet whose ‘gothic’ writings, melancholy life and youthful suicide fascinated artists and writers of the 19th century. At an early age, he wrote fake medieval histories and poems, which he copied onto old parchment and passed off as manuscripts from the Middle Ages. The fraud was later discovered. In London he struggled to earn a living writing tales and songs for popular publications. Penniless, he took his own life by swallowing arsenic at the age of 17.

Gallery label, November 2016

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Rosa Triplex  1867

triple portrait of Charles I by Van Dyck. Rossetti's

Gallery label, August 2004

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sancta Lilias  1874

This is the abandoned first version of one of Rossetti’s most important pictures, The Blessed Damozel (1875–8). He first treated the subject in a poem which, inspired by Dante’s love for Beatrice, describes a dead woman’s yearning for her still-living lover. In the completed painting, Rossetti shows the Damozel looking down on her beloved from Heaven; this is the scene shown here. Rossetti’s fascination with the separation imposed by death proved eerily prophetic when his wife Elizabeth Siddall died of an overdose of laudanum in 1862.

Gallery label, November 2016